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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Comforting take on meatloaf and potatoes....

When I think of comfort food dishes, one that immediately pops into my mind is meatloaf. While I love making big free-form loaves, its fun to prepare them in an unexpected way and make mini individual loaves.

What else goes well with meatloaf? Potatoes of course! Mashed is always tasty, but we also enjoy whole roasted... so, our dinner tonight was a recipe for Mini Honey-Mustard Meatloaves with Roasted FingerlingPotatoes.

To keep these from feeling like your eating a mis-shapened dense hamburger, an egg and crisp panko breadcrumbs is added to the ground sirloin to help lighten the texture. Ketchup is the classic topping that is usually slathered on top, but a sweet tang is added to these by cutting the smooth tomato with honey-mustard. Since there is a handful of cheese inside the meatloaves, a sprinkling of the same sharp white cheddar is placed on top before they go into the oven to bake.

To make efficient use of the oven, the potatoes are roasted at the same time as the meatloaves - just be sure to use the upper and lower thirds of the oven to give enough room for airflow. Keeping the flavor clean, the potatoes are simply coated in olive oil and seasoned with salt and fresh ground black pepper. The potatoes will probably take around 5 minutes more time than the meatloaves, but this is a good thing as it gives the the meat a chance to rest before serving. You don't have to use fingerling potatoes (they can be kind of pricey, but they are so good!) - you could just as well quarter or halve some new potatoes instead. Pretty effortless, filling and definitely comforting, you could quickly assemble the meat mixture beforehand and just pop both items in the oven for a speedy weeknight dinner.

7 comments:

Oh my gosh, that looks fantastic! I'm going to have to make that for dinner next week. I get so much inspiration from your blog.

Speaking of which, I intend to make the Red Velvet cupcakes today, and as I was reading through the recipe, I noticed that it calls for 2oz of red food coloring. I've never made this kind of cake before, but that sounds like a lot of coloring. I've got one 1oz bottle. Do you think that'll work ok?

Hey Joe, I'm making this for my family tonight and have a question - I don't know if it makes a difference, but did you put the meatloaf on the bottom third or top third rack(if roasting along with the potatoes)? Thanks! :)